Entries tagged with:
OperationWindowSeat

The YYC - LAX flight had a gorgeous path through the rockies and cruised the coast along LA. This last trip, i had some stranger LA questions than usual - hearing “Is this your first time in snow?” and “Do you live downtown/in the city?” and “Do you like ocean or mountains?” I’ve also had so many people assume that NOTCOT is based in NY, SF, LONDON, and so many other places over the years…

So to set the record straight - NOTCOT is based in LA! I’m a born and raised LA kid who has bounced around all over and landed back in LA the last few years (it really is my favorite home base to live in and travel out of!) And as for LA - for those who looked at me perplexed this last adventure - you can see within minutes you can run up mountain trails or roll down to the beach… and see snow on the mountains in the background!

It’s been a while since a OperationWindowSeat has come along… but it was pretty spectacular flying in to Istanbul this week not to snap a few shots. Unfortunately it snuck up on us (after a long long direct flight of a nap from LAX!) so the pictures are from the iPhone! Take a peek on the next page…

As this adventure comes to a close (about to head to the airport in a few for a day of GIG-JFK-LAX, hopefully home by weds afternoon) ~ had to share the views from helicoptering around Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ~ i’ve already shown you the aerial views of beaches and the Sambodromo… and there were SO many mesmerizing ones left, i’ve had the hardest time narrowing them down… so before i hop on my next plane, i leave you with a bunch of them to explore on the next page! It was AMAZING. I wish i could do it again ~ and again ~ and then heli-tour every city! But Rio was especially beautiful seen this way… so many incredible buildings and favelas mixed into the luscious greenery of Brazil… and the Corcovado! You can really see it just about everywhere! Take a peek on the next page… and perhaps i’ll add more details when i get back…

Still cleaning up photos (out of hundreds) between Rio madness with Veuve Clicquot… the beach during carnaval is insanity. So here’s a quick peek of pics of Ipanema from HELICOPTER… Hotel Fasano ROOFTOP… then from ON the beach. SO many people! And red umbrellas. And gorgeous weather… see it on the next page!

p.s.
WAY more to come on the helicoptering. Absolutely stunning views which lead to FAR too many pics to figure out how to sort so far…

While this isn’t exactly a “window” seat ~ the stunning images of Rüdiger Nehmzow certainly fits in the category of stunning views from above into clouds and the world beneath. What really sets Nehmzow’s photographs apart is his technique… taking a plane up a few miles into the air over Manaus, Brazil, he takes pictures out of the open DOOR! (Don’t worry, he’s armed with oxygen mask and protection from the freezing temperatures!) These took my breath away when i saw them over at Cup of Jo! Take a peek at the making of video as well as some of my favorite shots from Rüdiger Nehmzow’s Cloud Collection on the next page!

On amazing little journeys ~ we started at the dock/house/helipad area on the water where we originally met the group of Mercedes-AMG SLS Roadsters… and our bags were waiting for us to head to the airport… via helicopter! So i have some video of the quick flight along the Cote du Azur as well as the landing (i felt like i was in a toy as we came in to land, it’s fun riding shotgun!) Then on to a quick Nice to Munich flight… over the alps, which are always stunning. The shadows. The way the snowy mountain tips peek through the fluffy clouds. The melting snow into lakes. The tiny green towns tucked between it all… and before landing there were amazing amounts of teeny tiny sail boats below out in a lake! Take a peek at all of it on the next page!

As painful as waking up at 4am was to grab a 5am cab to catch a 7am flight out of Mallorca earlier than planned (but for good reason! Off to german adventures to see siblings of my car being made and meet the guy who built my engine! but more on that later) ~ the sunrise was gorgeous out the airplane window from Mallorca to Barcelona… take a peek on the next page!

So, who would have thought the Pittsburgh/LA direct flight route (one a day in each direction on United!) would be so awesome. With no wifi, a small plane, magical first class upgrades, food, and super nice crews… with windowseats and great timing on the flights to catch sunsets mid flight… i’ve been getting some of the best meditative/ME time! Awesome naps and placemats filled with notes ~ and between naps today i scrambled for my camera as soon as my eyes opened a crack and thought i was in some otherworldly place. Turns out a cloudy day below can make for quite the surreal flight home… some of the shapes were unreal, how did the clouds even make those angles and layers?!?! How did those layers of clouds start to look like a glassy ocean with peeks of the midwestern farmlands below barely showing through? And the way the dramatic shadows change as the sun begins to set… mesmerizing. While cloud watching is fun laying on the grass, staring up at the sky… seeing what creatures and objects you spy… it can be even more amazing from the side, or from within the layers of them! So take a peek at OperationWindowSeat’s first Cloud edition on the next page… what do YOU see in them?

p.s.
for whatever reason the first thing my subconscious thought was: care bears + game of thrones. And the picture above looks like a rather pointed submarine with an arrow like periscope… or am i just seeing periscopes since its one of the current NOTlabs research project?

This post is brought to you by Lowe’s, and is the brainchild of NOTCOT. Find inspiration and encouragement as you plan, begin and complete do-it-yourself projects at Lowe’s Home 101.

I find myself staring into the sky a lot lately ~ especially in dense cities like New York, i can’t help but to stare upwards often. The clouds are just different! And the sunsets and Manhattanhenge have been awesomely dramatic… so when looking for home inspirations for this latest Lowe’s sponsored post, it seemed like the perfect excuse to see the color palettes we can pull out of these many sunset pics i’m finding on my phone this week! Take a peek at some of the stunning views on the next page!

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I’m also playing with and very impressed with the camera/UX on the new HTC Sensation! These sunset pics were all snapped with its 8mgp camera!

It’s been a little while since i’ve looked out a window, scrambled to find my camera, and just felt insanely inspired for one of these OperationWindowSeat posts ~ but today was STUNNING. And there’s always something about falling asleep in one place (this time Pittsburgh) only to awaken somewhere about an hour out of LA to an absolutely BREATH TAKING sunset.

While i’m uncertain whether it’s the influence of the engineering/prototyping madness of the weekend i just spent at CMU with Toyota’s Ideas For Good adventure (sneak peek part I is here)… the unmistakeable sparkle of the city as we came in today kept feeling more like a giant circuit board… don’t the warehouse lighting patterns make them look like little chips? Also SO many brightly lit baseball fields! Even flowers of them jumping out between the glowing grid of the city… So anyhow, take a peek at more pics while i wake up here in LA and sift through so much more to share with you.

Wow. It’s like an airplane eclipse ~ amazing circular rainbow and shadow of the plane cast on the clouds… apparently it was even more incredible in person, and the camera didn’t even begin to do it justice. This latest OperationWindowSeat comes from my dad who just returned from his latest adventures… incredible views as he flies in to Christmas Island… and to Honolulu on the return. The glow of the water and sky ~ the sandy shallows ~ the waves crashing on the shores ~ the dense city by the sea ~ diamondhead crater… and more!

It’s been a while since i’ve done an OperationWindowSeat post, timing hasn’t been quite right on a lot of my recent flights… but yesterday when i woke up on my LHR to LAX flight, it was just gorgeously snowing somewhere over central california… take a peek on the next page! (And on a side note, the rear facing biz class seats are kind of strange, no?)

Adventures with Kahlua begin today, car came to fetch me for the airport when it was still dark… hopped on a plane to Mexico City, and the change in scenery happened so quickly… from Mexico City (awesomely mesmerizing circles at the airport) after a few delays… hopped a tiny plane to Veracruz (which had some crazy windiness, trouble landing, and ended up circling out in the Gulf of Mexico… check out the insane white caps in the pics!)… then hopped in a suburban for another 2 hours out to Coatapec near Xalapa… where we quickly joined the rest of the group who had been hanging out at the 150 year old Cantina for a good chunk of the afternoon. So before i pass out from quite the surreal travel day… take a peek at the latest OperationWindowSeat! Still inspires and fascinates me to no end to see the world fly by far below, and all the patterns and textures and colors that emerge…

This is Part II of Justine’s LAX-LHR contribution to OperationWindowSeat ~ Part I was the Tiny Planes! Now it’s a look at the stunningly snowy winter edition as she flew into the VERY snow covered UK. It’s really so amazing to see the patterns cut so crisply into the white snow, layered with the fluffy clouds! Check it all out on the next page!

Justine seems to be taking over my OperationWindowSeat addiction… and is taking it to a whole new level. Armed with her new Canon 60D, on her LAX home to LHR flight, she has started taking some amazing TINY PLANE SPOTTING pics! Found these in my dropbox shortly after she got home. You have to see how incredibly tiny they look! Then let yourself imagine how many people are in there! They are pretty amazing, almost surreal, and i swear i didn’t photoshop them in! So very fascinatingly tiny, check them out on the next page!

Justine just flew over to LA from London ~ and sadly the upside to terrible turbulence turned out to be amazing clouds! The type that look like a world of their own hovering above ours, as i cleaned up the pics, i couldn’t help looking for care bears in cloud cars. Then again, in the last pic, you will see the bizarre object she looked up to see flying by… turns out it was another plane! But the most fascinating part about this flight was seeing all the ice! And the fractal like patterns and twists and turns of the roads jumping out so crisply… not to mention watching the layers of clouds making incredible shadows on the ice! Take a peek at it all on the next page!

I just went literally around the world in 4 days! And for all who agreed it sounded both awesome and horrifying all at once… Mercedes-Benz managed to make it impressively painless, luxuriously comfortable even ~ i actually may have both seen more and slept far more than usual ~ as i was catapulted between time zones so quickly, my body had yet to completely notice before ending up right back here in LA! So forgive me for going quiet the last few days… i honestly can’t recall the last time i’ve actually had so little internet (and barely enough time to even panic about it!) I’ve just touched back down to LA, though currently in Laguna Beach for a bit before LA Auto Week kicks off. The gist of the trip is “Timeless Design” where we visit 4 of Mercedes’ six global design studios, one after the other! So on weds night i left LA, ended up in Stuttgart Thurs night (via Munich) to see the Sindelfingen studio on Friday, then quickly to a private jet to Milan, where we drive to see the Como studio - spend the night in Milan (next to the duomo!) - saturday morning we take the jet to Frankfurt to hop on the beautiful A380 to Tokyo - pop into the Tokyo hotel for and hour and a half to freshen up before heading to the Tokyo studio - and then hop on another jumbo jet right back to LA… and here i am in Laguna Beach SUNDAY AFTERNOON! …with an hour before the meeting with the futurist, a million pictures to sort out… and we’ve yet to visit the Carlsbad studio, or play with the cars, or see the auto show. So, here’s some quick NotVentures/OperationWindowSeating literally around the world on the next page to inspire you… the globe has never felt quite so small or diverse as it does right now, my head is still spinning trying to keep track of all the places we’ve been and things we’ve seen in such a tiny amount of time… surreal to say the least! While this is certainly not everything, and a bunch of flights were in the dark… see some of the most inspiring views i found!

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As for the actual design inspiration and incredible studio peeks… coming soon. Somewhere between catching up on all the pics and making sense of a bigger story as the trip comes to a close!

In light of the launch of NotVentures and the recently unboxed MacBook Air… impulsively hopped a flight to celebrate ~ deciding to take a quick overnight trip up to SF… which resulted in some gorgeous midday cliche sunny california weather both yesterday and today! Exciting news ~ NO problems at all with 11” MacBook Air going through airport security in my bag!!! And it’s a breeze to pack, and starts up so quickly… perfect for quick work on the plane and at the airport… perfect to toss into a bag that doesn’t scream “laptop!”. And beyond that ~ being a gorgeous day, both ways, with incredible views, i’d be remiss not to give you another OperationWindowSeat post! So mesmerizing watching the patterns that show up when looking at the world from above… and getting some literal distance and mental perspective… take a peek at my awesome mini-vacation on the next page!

Amazing OperationWindowSeat pics from Justine and Charles just in! SO jealous i wasn’t there to see the view, it looks stunning! Honestly, this all makes me wonder if we have too much tech going on IN our planes sometime ~ there’s something about looking down at the teeny tiny world from this perspective that really makes you see life and existence in a whole new light… also the fractal nature of how incredible things look from afar and as you zoom in closer is just mind blowing ~ here’s what Justine has to say: “For the latest installment of OperationWindowSeat, we bring you highlights of an incredible daytime flight from Singapore to London Heathrow. Here are a few shots from the journey which started by crossing the Bay of Bengal, offering views of stunning coastline and winding tributaries, and included passage over desert mountains in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan and incredible arrangements of fields across eastern Poland before finally bringing us home to London.” Really, really stunning landscapes, take a peek at the pictures on the next page!

Thanks to Veuve Clicquot, i’m currently curled up on a cloud of a bed here in Paris after a beautiful flight from LA today! Left around 3:45pm got in to Paris around 11am ~ and in between? headed up past vegas/salt lake/etc through canada over greenland/iceland/uk and ended up in paris… and so many gorgeous views… lots of dramatically lit mountains, even flew over some pretty crazy fires, gorgeous scottish/british countryside, french coast… and glowingly red clouds… nothing like a flight to remind you how little all your emails and errands and life is ~ floating above the clouds really throws things back in perspective! Take a peek at some of my favorite views in this latest addition to OperationWindowSeat on the next page!

Time for another installment of OperationWindowSeat ~ a peek out the window at the teeny tiny world below. This time Nike Golf has brought me out to Fort Worth, Texas to check out the Crowne Plaza Invitational at the Colonial Country Club and the Nike Golf R&D Oven (which i’m extremely curious about!) But first things first ~ jetlag has me up bright and early, so figured i’d share a peek into my aerial tour of the southwest from Los Angeles to Fort Worth. The pilot was seriously like a tour guide the whole flight, with constant “To your left you can see….” and nuggets of history and random factoids. While it was nearly TOO bright and beautiful out, washing out some of the pics ~ i tried to pull some of the patterns that mesmerized me back out of the pics… and you can see squiggly winding rivers, craters, the salton sea, edges of the grand canyon, the southern coast of LA/OC, and more on the next page…

As you’ve noticed by now, i have been recently fascinated by the world from above ~ and not in just a google satellite view ~ but amazing views of cities and the in betweens as dramatic sunsets and sunrises hit them… So thanks to Mercedes who was incredibly kind to bring me to Stuttgart to learn more about their world (even when i needed to come from Singapore and leave to Milan)… here’s another installment of what my friend and i have been calling OperationWindowSeat! Doing it backwards, on the next page you can see pics as i come in to Milan from Stuttgart… then Stuttgart on my way from Singapore… amazing how the terrain changes ~ and the lighting!

I’m having one of those, sensory overload, exhausted yet giddy moments… sometimes we all need to step pretty far out of our daily lives to simultaneously reset, reflect, and find inspiration in the unexpected. For the next 5 days, i’m hiding out in the Lembeh Strait of Sulawesi, Indonesia… and they have awesome wifi, so when i’m not drop dead tired or diving exploring all the creatures around… the regularly scheduled content may be coming on vacation with me! So today was a morning flight to Manado from Singapore, followed by a 1.5 hour van ride through Bitung out to the dive spot, and now i’m curled up in my adorable cottage at Kungkungan Bay Resort. Certainly quite the contrast to the design overload i’m looking forward to in Milan in a few weeks! Although i thought about crashing after the day of travel, when i stared out at the possibly full moon with the intense clouds over the ocean… i couldn’t help taking a few pics, and i’m so in love with the view, i had to share them with you before i got some sleep! Isn’t it amazing how the palm trees and clouds look in the moonlight? See a few more pics of the night… some of the view on the flight in… and another random pic or too…

I passed out as soon as i sat down on the plane from SLC to LAX ~ i barely remember take off ~ and then suddenly when turbulence jolted me awake somewhere in between, all i saw out the window were surreal and stunningly dramatic shadows on snowy mountains… and i was so mesmerized, then something kicked in, and i half awakenly grabbed my camera, and felt like i was dream shooting all the way back to LA. So fun to see the world from that view ~ such a nice perspective shift from what’s felt like a very conceptually nazel gazing last few days. I love the way the snow transitioned into dessert… and into cities… and the way roads are carved into the snowy tree filled mountainside… the way the city glowed with the hollywood sign and downtown popping out as we landed… Take a look on the next page!